The Charlotte News
Thursday, June 3, 1954
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that at the U.N. in New York, the Security Council voted this date over Soviet opposition to debate Thailand's request for a U.N. watchdog commission to study the Indo-China war threat to Thailand's borders, the first time the war crisis had been placed before the U.N. The Thai Ambassador to the U.S. had started the debate with a charge that the war not only directly threatened his country but menaced the legal governments of neighboring Cambodia and Laos, two of the three Associated States of Indo-China, along with Viet Nam. After he spoke, the Council adjourned indefinitely to allow the delegations to study the request and obtain instructions from their governments. Only the Soviet Union opposed the request, foreshadowing its eventual veto as one of the five permanent members of the Council with that unilateral right. The Soviet delegate claimed that the move would hinder peace in Indo-China by interfering with the negotiations for a cease-fire ongoing at Geneva. France switched from its previous opposition to support of placing the Thai request on the agenda. (It is worth recalling at this juncture that U.N. action in Korea in late June, 1950 was not blocked by the Soviet veto on the Security Council because the Soviets had boycotted the U.N. in early 1950 because of the refusal to seat Communist China in lieu of the Nationalist Chinese on the Security Council following the 1949 victory by the Communist Chinese in the Chinese civil war.)
In the 26th day of the hearings before the Senate Investigations subcommittee regarding the dispute between the Army and Senator McCarthy, usual subcommittee chief counsel Roy Cohn continued his testimony, saying that Attorney General Herbert Brownell or his assistants had instigated the hearings and that it constituted a "stacked deck" against the McCarthy side should perjury charges develop out of the hearings, as it would be the Attorney General who would ultimately decide whether to bring such charges before a grand jury. Mr. Cohn testified that it was true that the Army made its charges, in the form of a report to the subcommittee regarding the efforts by Senator McCarthy and Mr. Cohn to obtain favorable treatment for Private G. David Schine, after failing in "blackmail attempts" to try to halt the McCarthy subcommittee investigation of the Army. Senator Henry Jackson, conducting the questioning of Mr. Cohn, reminded him that Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens and Army general counsel John G. Adams had testified earlier in the hearings that the blackmail charge was false. Mr. Cohn, however, insisted that the charge had been proven by testimony from Senators on the subcommittee, itself. He referred to testimony by the Senators that Mr. Adams had visited them to try to shut down a move by the subcommittee to subpoena members of the Army Loyalty Board. He said that Senator Everett Dirksen had said that Mr. Adams had "hinted" that if the subpoenas were not dropped, "something else would be done." During the testimony, Senator Dirksen read a transcript of three of the monitored calls out of the office of Secretary Stevens, all of which pertained to the alleged mistreatment of Brig. General Ralph Zwicker by Senator McCarthy during the General's testimony before the subcommittee regarding the investigation of alleged Communist infiltration of the Army at the secret radar facility at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey. In one of the telephone calls, from the prior February, Secretary Stevens had said that he had appeared to be a "yellow-belly" in the dispute with Senator McCarthy, and that he had been "absolutely crucified" along with the military services.
Senator McCarthy said this date during the hearings that he had offered the Defense Department all of the information he had on Communists in defense plants but that the Department had not decided whether it wanted to accept it. The statement followed the reading of a communication from the Department by Senator Stuart Symington, which had said that it had complete power and responsibility to weed out any Communists who might be working on secret defense contracts within private industry. Senator McCarthy insisted, however, that there were Communists working in defense plants presently and that his secretary had called Assistant Secretary of Defense Fred Seaton the previous night and told him that the Department could send a representative to his office to obtain the information. He said that he had two conditions, that an official reporter would be present so that there could be no question in the future about the information imparted, and that the Department would agree not to make public the names of individuals until they had been given an opportunity to appear before his subcommittee or a loyalty board.
At the afternoon session of the hearings, Mr. Cohn continued his testimony.
In Corning, N.Y., Dr. Edward Condon, former head of the Bureau of Standards, said the previous night that Defense Department officials were reviewing his security status. He was presently director for the Corning Glass Works and stated that he was working only on nonmilitary projects and had no access to classified information while the review was pending. He declined to elaborate whether the Department action constituted a suspension of his clearance. He said that the review was in connection with the firm's Government contracts for the Navy and did not raise any question of his loyalty or violation of secrecy rules. His name had been mentioned in the report made public on Tuesday by the Presidential special board reviewing the loyalty of Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, the findings of which are covered in an editorial below.
Rowland Evans, Jr., reports that Senate Republicans were reportedly in agreement informally this date to provide almost solid support to the President's public housing program, apparently ensuring its Senate passage. Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana, the ranking committee chairman, told newsmen, after a meeting of Republicans Senators, that it was his judgment that there were sufficient votes for passage. Most Democrats were expected to support the public housing bill, despite a move by Senator Burnet Maybank of South Carolina to strike from it a section adopted in committee which went far beyond the President's request.
In Washington, a jury of seven men and five women was chosen in just under an hour this date to hear the case of the four Puerto Rican Nationalists who had opened fire in the House of Representatives on March 1, wounding five Congressmen, one critically, all of whom had fully recovered. The leader of the group, Lolita Lebron, and her three male co-defendants, were charged in five counts each with assault with intent to kill and in another five counts each with assault with a dangerous weapon, each facing a maximum possible sentence of 75 years in prison. They were defended by four court-appointed attorneys. At their earlier arraignment, Mrs. Lebron had stated that she wanted it to be known that what she had done was in defense of her country, and that her plea of not guilty was on that basis.
In Vienna, Austria, a Belgian transport plane was shot up by another plane this date near the Yugoslav-Austrian frontier, and its radio officer was killed. Two of the surviving crewmen described the attacking plane as a Russian-made MIG, possibly from Hungary. The Belgian plane, a DC-3, carried pedigreed pigs from Britain to Belgrade, and had a crew of four, three Belgians and one Briton. The British co-pilot was uninjured and said that the attacking plane was a MIG. The plane made an emergency landing at Graz, Austria.
In Pasadena, Calif., Attorney General Brownell, speaking before a banquet celebrating the completion of a campaign to raise $301,000 for the Pasadena YMCA, stated that Communist claims of racial intolerance in the country had been answered directly by the Brown v. Board of Education decision of the Supreme Court, indicating that the decision had taken a long step toward eliminating any trace of second-class citizenship in the country.
In Raleigh, the State Board of Education this date voted unanimously to continue operating segregated public schools until the Supreme Court provided its final ruling on the implementing decision, set for oral argument and briefing at the beginning of the fall term of the Court in October. The Board had consulted with Governor William B. Umstead before the meeting. The Board was chaired by Lt. Governor Luther Hodges, to become Governor the following November at the death Governor Umstead.
Also in Raleigh, Governor Umstead was expected to act soon to fill the vacancies left by the death of Senator Clyde Hoey three weeks earlier and the death of the State Labor commissioner, Forrest Shuford. It was believed that he might name the successor to the latter post during the afternoon, at a scheduled press conference.
In Santa Monica, Calif., actress Shelley Winters obtained a divorce from her actor husband, Victorio Gassman, on the basis that he was "temperamentally unsuited for marriage". She testified the previous day that he had once told her that if she wanted to be married to a European, she would have to live where her husband lived and would have to give him a great deal of freedom, to which she said she had told him that it was not the kind of marriage she wanted. She obtained custody of their 15-month old daughter and a property settlement which provided for ten percent of her husband's earnings for the support of the child, with a minimum of $5,000 if he was working in the United States and $3,500 if he was working abroad.
On the editorial page, "AEC Should Review Oppenheimer Case" indicates that the loyalty case against Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, reviewed by a three-man Presidential committee chaired by Gordon Gray, president of UNC, had concluded with a fair hearing before competent and objective men and that the national interest would be served if Dr. Oppenheimer were not associated in the future with the atomic energy program. The conclusion was somewhat self-contradictory, as the nation was losing the services of its most eminent nuclear scientist, but it had been the considered judgment of two of the members of the committee, Mr. Gray and Thomas Morgan, both North Carolinians, the latter the former president of Sperry Gyroscope, that his clearance for atomic secrets should not be reinstated, despite the fact that they had found him to be a "loyal citizen".
It finds the assignment for the committee to have been difficult, that even during Dr. Oppenheimer's admitted days of association with Communists during the 1930's, his political naïveté and anger at the Nazis' treatment of the Jews were mitigating factors, and that his opposition to development of the hydrogen bomb on moral grounds, while perhaps wrong, was not a ground for a finding of disloyalty. The fact that the record was not clear-cut could be found in the dissent by the third member of the board, chemist Ward Evans of Loyola University of Chicago.
It posits that in view of the dissent, it was imperative that the AEC provide full review of the committee's findings and recommendations, as it would be the final determiner of atomic security and should accept the ultimate responsibility.
"Kurfees Statement Was in Order" indicates that Mayor Marshall Kurfees of Winston-Salem had issued an apology for having injected the race issue into the Senatorial campaign just before the primary, finding that it partially atoned for his error. He accepted full responsibility for preparing and paying for an ad placed in the Winston-Salem Journal and then reprinted and distributed across the eastern part of the state, signed by the leader of a Winston-Salem black organization, a friend of Mayor Kurfees, congratulating Governor Scott for appointing a black college president to the State Board of Education, while actually Mayor Kurfees had supported Senator Lennon in the election.
Though Senator Lennon had apparently not been involved personally in the matter, it suggests that the chicanery might have had an adverse impact on his candidacy, as it had come to light just prior to the primary and because thinking North Carolinians, remembering the use of the race issue against Senator Frank Graham in 1950 in the primary race with the late Willis Smith—rumored to have been the handiwork of Jesse Helms, Mr. Smith's assistant at the time and subsequently as Senator—, and being conscious of the problems posed by the recent Brown decision, had not wanted racism to become a part of the campaign. It was possible, it suggests, that for every vote gained by the maneuver, one or more votes had been lost by Senator Lennon.
It indicates that it was inevitable
that candidates or their more zealous supporters would sometimes step
over the ethical boundaries in North Carolina's active political
campaigns, but that in the long run, the voters would respond more
enthusiastically if the candidates were to restrict themselves to the
issues at hand and avoid
Incidentally, that some little clown at YouTube has age-restricted the foregoing first-linked video of Bob Haldeman and other principals discussing for a couple of minutes "the Bay of Pigs thing", suggests plainly an effort to obfuscate truth or at least to keep track of those who might be seeking it, as there is absolutely nothing about that brief segment suggestive of the need for age restriction. There is no age restriction in a free society on getting at truth, now, is there? Your efforts to try to hide something which you deem threatening to your subjective, standardized version of historical events spoonfed to you with the sugar-coating of high school or younger pasteurization and processing by some knuckle-cracker, ruler-ruled bobsled king or queen, themselves constrained by a school board's narrowly confined strictures on curriculum and assignments based on some higher authority's remotely determined boundaries of acceptable inquiry premised, in turn, on what is easily divisible within the lowest common denominator, are really getting old. St. Joseph? Do you know the way?
"The Expert" congratulates Senator-nominate and former Governor Kerr Scott for accurately predicting his final tally in the Saturday primary, having said the day before the election that he would win with 51.5 percent of the vote, when the final tally gave him 50.7 percent.
"A Confession … and an Apology" indicates that the voters of Charlotte Township would have a sorry choice if they had a runoff for the constable's office, though it was partly their own fault. Both of the top two contenders had police records, as indicated on the previous two days' front pages, whereas the man who had come in third in the race had no police record. Had the information been available to the voters prior to the primary the previous Saturday, chances were good that the third man would have looked very good to the voters, but now was left out of the potential runoff. Republicans had not put forth a candidate prior to the filing deadline and so could not take advantage of the issue in the general election in the fall.
It confesses its delinquency in not digging out earlier the facts about the two candidates and apologizes for the error, assures that it would not happen again and that records of candidates for public office would be scrutinized closely, that the facts, if they showed repeated violations of the law, would be fully publicized henceforth.
"Plaudits" indicates that the City Council's rejection of the "carport" amendment to the zoning ordinance would be generally applauded, as it would have permitted construction of carports, open on three sides, up to the edge of the property line in areas zoned as residential, and that in many cases would have destroyed the privacy guaranteed by the side-yard setback restrictions of the current ordinance. The amendment was aimed at relieving hardship cases and the Council took the wiser course by leaving it up to the Zoning Board of Adjustment to handle those cases by allowing variances.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "The Nation Takes It Well", indicates that the black press and other spokesmen for black citizens had rejoiced at the Supreme Court's desegregation decision, but had not gloated, hailing it as a second Emancipation Proclamation, yet with the realization that, just as with the 1863 decree by President Lincoln, and as with the 14th Amendment in 1868, there were no guarantees of equality. In the border states of Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, public school segregation had been required by law, but that with the exception of Virginia and possibly Kentucky, the problems posed by the Brown decision hardly compared in magnitude with those facing the Deep South. Elsewhere, extralegal segregation of black homes and social life and job discrimination had formed the more characteristic modes of division between the races.
News and commentary thus far had suggested that the Court's decision would cause a re-examination of attitudes and practices, with questioning undertaken as to which had been maintained only because of their own momentum. While that would be a healthy process, it would not guarantee that racial problems would disappear.
In the South, where segregation had been maintained by tradition, economic, emotional, political and moral suasion, as well as by law, it was not surprising that the reaction had ranged from the passionately bitter to the rationally serene. The South had generally reacted with restraint. Some of the most bitter and defiant reactions had come from politicians who made obligatory sounds and gestures expected from hot-headed elements within their constituencies. Having done so, however, many of those politicians, it predicts, would now get down to the sober job of finding workable solutions. But, it assures, many good people of the South who were neither politicians nor "wool hats", the reference being to the Georgia rural followers of Governor Herman Talmadge and his deceased father, Eugene, did not feel very deeply about the decision, having accepted equality of opportunity for blacks, feeling no hatred for the population but rather friendly esteem. Those who believed in preservation of the separation of the races based that belief on concepts of propriety and morality, however, which could not be ignored.
It suggests that there might be isolated instances of violence and some local defiance of directed change, but it doubts that any actual defiance would be statewide and official. It finds it more likely that there would be attempts to delay implementation of the decision and find detours within the contours of the decision, itself, "while out of the good sense and Christianity of both races evolves a new modus vivendi." It posits that some of those detours could prove dangerous, such as Georgia's proposal to pay state tuition money to private and church schools, that it would be tragic and ironic for an overwhelmingly Protestant state to breach the wall of separation between state and church.
Drew Pearson indicates that a
possible portent of things to come in the November midterm elections
had occurred in California the previous week when Senator Thomas
Kuchel, a Republican, had produced a smear sheet attacking his
Democratic opponent, Congressman Sam Yorty, future Mayor of Los
Angeles
In other news from California, James Roosevelt, running for Congress, was almost certain to win despite his public marital troubles. The Republican California Legislature had gerrymandered his district before they knew he was going to run, putting as many Democratic voters as possible in it to make other districts safer for Republicans, and the criticism of him staying in the race by DNC chairman Stephen Mitchell had boomeranged in Mr. Roosevelt's favor.
California labor, usually voting for Democrats, was now split, as the Teamster boss, close to Mayor Norris Roulson of Los Angeles, had thrown support to Governor Goodwin Knight, and the AFL had also officially endorsed the Governor. Yet, about two-thirds of the rank-and-file AFL members would probably continue to vote Democratic. Governor Knight had made one slip when he told a Stanford University audience, when asked about the Fair Employment Practices Committee issue, designed to bring about equal opportunity in employment as to hiring, promotion and wages, that he would ask them how they would "like to have a Negro riding and sleeping in the same truck with you".
In the harness-track scandals in California, a charge had surfaced that the harness-tracks had contributed $35,000 to Governor Knight's campaign, to which the Governor had not responded.
The Citizens for Eisenhower had asked for support for George Arnold, despite him being a Democrat running for Congress from Los Angeles.
Philadel Hall of Riverside had offered a DeSoto car to anyone who would tell him one constructive thing which Republican John Phillips had done while in Congress, and thus far, no one had won the car.
State Senator Jack Tenny, sometimes called the McCarthy of California, chairman of the California Committee on Un-American Activities, had written a four-page letter to voters regarding Jews, indicating that he was not happy they had voted against him.
Congressman Walter Judd of Minnesota had been placed on the spot when the Justice Department had rebuffed Senator McCarthy for proclaiming his own personal spy system inside the Government, as Congressman Judd, who prided himself for being one of the President's close friends and original supporters, had proposed a similar espionage system for himself while traveling through the Far East. Meeting with American diplomats and personnel in Bangkok, he invited them to write him if they felt lost and neglected, whereupon one diplomat asked whether that would be disloyal for going over the head of the State Department, to which the Congressman replied that there were some good Congressmen and some indiscreet ones, the latter of whom would not be the ones to whom to write, but that they could rely on him to be discreet and so could correspond.
The Congressional Quarterly, in the first in a series of articles, regards the South's adjustment to the May 17 decision of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, begins by quoting from the decision, then proceeds to explain that the Court had delayed its implementing part of the decision until the next term, starting in October, when oral arguments and briefing on the method of implementation would be heard, each of the other 12 states impacted by the decision having been invited to submit briefs, in addition to the five school districts directly before the Court, from Kansas, Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware and the District of Columbia.
It indicates that the Topeka School Board out of Kansas had already moved to eliminate its segregation and the District of Columbia had adopted a five-point program which would begin elimination of its segregation during the coming fall, to be completed by the time of the start of the school year in 1955. Governor Thomas Stanley of Virginia had invited the governors of the states which mandated segregation by law to meet in Richmond to consider plans dealing with the decision. Governor Herman Talmadge of Georgia and other state officials had declared their intention to maintain segregation, with statutes pending action by the Legislatures of both Georgia and South Carolina to abolish the public school systems and have them operated by private associations, in an attempt to circumvent the ruling. The Secretary of State of Maryland, John Reeves, had said in an unofficial opinion that, as a matter of routine, that state's Legislature might be asked to repeal segregation statutes which were in conflict with the decision. Officials in more than half of the Southern states had indicated their intention to abide by the ruling, despite being disappointed by it. In Arkansas and elsewhere, school boards in various localities had announced conforming plans.
It indicates that over the previous 70 years, migrations had greatly changed the distribution of the black population in the country while the proportion of blacks in the total population had actually decreased, dropping from 13.1 percent in 1880 to 10 percent in 1950. In 1950, no Southern state had a black population constituting as much as half of its total populace, whereas blacks formed 60.7 percent of the population of South Carolina in 1880.
In North Carolina, the proportion of the black population in 1880 had been 38 percent, whereas in 1950, it had dropped to 25.8 percent, the piece providing a table of the percentages by decades, showing consistent decrease. Between 1920 and 1950, the proportion had dropped by four percent.
There had also been migration within the states from rural areas to the cities. In the 17 Southern states which maintained legal segregation, 39.4 percent of the 2.7 million blacks of school age in 1950 had been located in urban areas, while in the North, heavy concentrations of blacks had developed in major urban areas.
During recent years, black education had progressed rapidly. In 1870, about 20 percent of the general population ten years old or older were illiterate, whereas 80 percent of the black population fell into that category. By 1947, only two percent of the general population were illiterate while about ten percent of the non-white population were in that category.
In 1949-50, in the 17 states with mandatory segregation, 338,000 black students were in high school, compared to more than 1.5 million white students. There were about 45,000 blacks and 277,000 whites who had graduated from high school that year. In 1950-51, the 108 black institutions of higher learning had graduated 13,000 students with undergraduate degrees and 768 with masters degrees, and their enrollment in the fall of 1953 had been 69,494.
It points out that states integrating their schools would have some guidelines to consider from the experience of some Northern areas where segregation had been practiced until recently. Within the previous few years, Illinois had integrated its schools in a number of counties and New Jersey had integrated 43 school districts.
Recent estimates of the costs of equalizing facilities in the Southern states between black and white schools and between rural and urban schools, and of providing for larger school populations set to occur in the ensuing eight years, resulted in a total projected school budget of some 2.5 billion dollars for 1962, compared to the present expenditure of 1.45 billion. If the South continued to spend the same proportion of its income on schools at 3.3 percent, and if its income were to rise at an annual rate of 3.1 percent, below the increase of recent years, the region could foot the bill.
A letter writer indicates that her husband was the third candidate in the race for local constable, and that he had no police record, and had 27 years of service to the Charlotte Fire Department.
The editors note the above editorial on the matter.
A letter writer from Lancaster indicates that since moving from Florida four years earlier, he had been a subscriber to the newspaper, but after seeing nothing but praise and admiration for the Brown decision, he would never buy the newspaper again, and hopes that others felt the same way. He indicates that the editors were not white or Southern and that he would like to see them make their living out of Frank Graham, Thurgood Marshall, Judge J. Waties Waring and the NAACP. "As of now, you head the list of S.O.B.'s of the world."
No, that position is strictly reserved for you and your kind, you little son of a bitch. Moreover, the newspaper had favored retention of segregation in the public schools, and only now, in the wake of the decision, counseled a peaceful, patient and law-abiding transition to implementation of the decision, which they believed would take many years to occur. You seem to want another civil war over it.
A letter writer urges the "Mothers of Mecklenburg County" to fight the Supreme Court decision, that "Negroes are all right in their place and should have equal schools, but this is going too far", that there would be bloodshed right at the beginning. She wonders what was wrong with Governor Umstead, questions whether he had gone to sleep or perhaps actually approved of the decision. She wants to have a vote on the matter—that is, a vote whether to follow the supreme law of the land as determined by the Supreme Court. She says that the Clear Creek black school was far superior to the Clear Creek white school. "But it isn't enough our children have to attend school with them, eat and sit with them—God knows what else before it's finished." She thinks it was time to sell out and move to Georgia. She finds it heartbreaking to have three small children say that they would quit school when they reached the age of 16. She indicates that the Bible said that there would be wars and rumors of war when the end was near, and that if this wasn't it, she did not understand her Bible. She is against race mixing in the schools.
We don't think you understand your
Bible very well, unless, perhaps, it is the Bible of the Satanic
School, such as Mein Kampf. You're just another white Mother, of a rote
A letter writer, anonymous, asks the true meaning of the word "segregation" in the country, whether it was a word of evil nature or activity and whether it was discriminatory against a minority of the population. The person suggests that there were differences in people, as there were in all other things, and that those differences did not constitute the quality or usefulness of any particular person or object. The writer believes that the Supreme Court decision would lead to dissension and ill feeling on the part of both races, and would be gratifying to the Kremlin, finds the decision unjust and that it was the right of Southerners to conduct their own civil affairs in a manner to promote the smooth functioning of two separate but equal classes of citizenry. The writer suggests that both races were happier associating with their own and that the Supreme Court had ignored that fact. The writer wants readers to write to their Senators and Congressmen demanding a referendum and an amendment to the Constitution.
You're an idiot.
A letter writer, who had previously
written indicating that she did not want her grandchildren to attend
school with black children, says that she would not mistreat anyone
but did not want her children in school with anyone who might not be
good and kind, that if God meant for the races to be together, he
would have made everyone white. She says that she had never
mistreated a black person and never would, wanted them to have good
schools and everything which white people had. She indicates that
there would be trouble when race mixing started, for there were mean
whites as well as mean blacks. She insists again that she was a
Christian, that she was slinging mud at no one and loved "my
colored persons' souls
You're also an idiot. You're among the ones causing trouble.
Framed Edition
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